Washington is not funny. Except Joe Biden.

Generally speaking, Washington people aren’t funny. They try and try, but their comic timing isn’t good, and their subjects are unpromising. Jon Stewart can wring a joke out of cap-and-trade legislation. Senators and cabinet secretaries should leave that sort of thing to the pros.

(Said Mr. Obama of House Republican leader John Boehner, who sports an apparently fake tan: “We have a lot in common. He’s a person of color. Although not a color that appears in the natural world.”)

One reason your typical elected (or appointed) official can’t crack wise is that humor is dangerous. One person’s joke is another’s outrage, and in politics it does not take much controversy for a trap door to open and end a career.

Earl Butz, secretary of Agriculture for Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, once told a very, very bad joke in a private setting. But the joke got out, and it was so bad, with racist and misogynist overtones, that Butz was forced to resign. He never served in public office again.

Plus, comedy is often the tool of the outsider, the person who sees and mocks the contradictions and connections that insiders accept, or miss. But Washington is a city full of people who were insiders from grade school on. Was Lenny Bruce ever a student body president? We think not. It is true, though, that Johnny Carson went to college with Ted Sorensen, John Kennedy’s wordsmith.